


halfway through this downward spiral

by AppleJuiz



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reunion, post 4x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 04:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18296816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleJuiz/pseuds/AppleJuiz
Summary: Quentin throws up. Margo gives a pep talk.





	halfway through this downward spiral

**Author's Note:**

> Should I have written this? The four essays I have due this week say no, but my heart says yes. I have a lot of feelings surrounding Quentin Coldwater and how he's doing and it's kinda ruining my life. Enjoy!

Quentin throws up. 

 

Which was a part of his plan, his new plan. He wanted to drink until he threw up. He wanted to drink until he blacked out, passed out, went blind. But especially until he threw up so he could get this churning nauseous sickness out of his stomach and into a toilet. 

 

He’s only two drinks in though, when he goes stumbling to the bathroom. So now he’s clinging to the bowl and his throat is burning, but he’s not drunk enough to be numb to all the physical unpleasantness of the situation or his screaming train of thoughts.

 

He can feel the tiles digging into his palm. It’s oddly comforting.

 

His head is spinning so he’s not sure how long he’s there, sprawled across the floor, his back bent in the most awkward way he can contort. Eventually Julia’s there. She’s always there lately.

 

Guardian angel of his future. 

 

He’s not sure which is looking shittier, his future or his past. 

 

Her fingers card through his hair, rub at his back. He throws up a few more times. She leaves maybe, at one point, and comes back with a glass of water.

 

“Oh Q,” she says, scooting closer, pressing her side against his.

 

A part of him is angry that they’re back here again. He’s a hot mess and Julia’s just there tutting over him. 

 

The rest of him is tired and he decides he’s too sick for complex emotions like that.

 

“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s gonna be okay. We’ll make it okay.”

 

He shakes his head and feels a little like a toddler.

 

“‘S not,” he says. “It was. It was the closest to okay it could be but now it’s…” A huge fucking mess that’s decided to lodge itself directly in his chest, right beneath his heart, pressing down on his stomach. 

 

“C’mon, talk to me, Q,” Julia says softly and her hand is on his shoulder now. “What’s going on?”

 

It’s easier now that he’s thrown up. Because he’s almost empty and all that’s left to purge is the dumpster fire in his brain. Also he can pretend that he’s drunk and that maybe he’ll forget everything in the morning. Or Julia will think he’s forgotten everything and not bring it up ever again.

 

“I thought I was helping,” he says, more to the absolutely wrecked toilet bowl than to Julia. “No, I was. I was helping him. I was… We were building a body and… it didn’t matter what I did, didn’t feel guilty for any of it, I had to because we… it would have its body and we would have Eliot. So it didn’t matter.”

 

“We’re going to fix it anyway,” she says. “We’re going to get him back, I promise, Q. We’ve pulled off the impossible before, we can do it again.”

 

He closes his eyes, the fluorescent bathroom light suddenly too bright. 

 

“I know,” he rasps. Because there’s nothing else to be done. He’s gonna wake up tomorrow and start again from scratch and it’s going to feel like those stupid egg races he was forced into a summer camp, like he just dropped his egg and he has to go all the way back to grab another egg and feel miles behind the other kids. (Also a great metaphor for the history of his mental health.)

 

The stakes are a lot higher than a dumb egg race. There’s no resigning himself to last, not when it’s Eliot.

 

But it’s more than just that. It’s more than just losing all his progress and being set adrift in this relentless quest.

 

“I know,” he says again. “But I… It was all for nothing. All the terrible things that happened. We killed gods, Julia.”

 

“We’ve done it before,” she says. 

 

“’S different this time,” he says. “I was doing it for him… I told myself that it didn’t matter, whether or not things were okay because I had to. I had to do it. And the whole time…”

 

Julia doesn’t have anything to say to that. Her arms wrap around his waist. 

 

Five eternities later, he finally feels good enough to stand back up. Julia helps.

 

He grabs a bottle of too nice wine from the kitchen and goes to bed.

  
.  
  


Margo’s back. 

 

It helps. Mostly. She hugs him for an un-Margo like amount of time and it’s different than the recent influx of Julia hugs. Because she’s Margo and she doesn’t worry about breaking people. Her affection always comes with a sharp edge that more than anything else makes it feel real.

 

“Missed you,” he says and it kinda surprises him, like it isn’t until he says it out loud that he even feels it, but he did miss her. In a way that lumped together with the way he missed Eliot because they’re such a boxed set. Margo and Eliot, his friends, since day one.

 

“Yeah, missed your little dorky ass, too,” she says and lets him go. 

 

Seeing her almost hurts because there’s an empty space right next to her where Eliot should be standing, a pause after each of her sentences where Eliot should slot in a wry quip.

 

She regales him with a highly dramatized recap of adventures in alpaca milk, dream cat spirits, political coups, and tripping balls in a Fillorian desert. 

 

“I hung out with a hallucination of El for a while,” she says. “He says hi.”

 

Seeing Margo is a lot of things that he doesn’t think he has time to process.

 

He decides to stop at this: the mere days he thought Eliot was dead tore through him in ways he’s trying not to think about. The fact that Margo survived week after week proves that she’s unspeakable stronger than he’ll ever be. 

 

He hugs her again and she pushes him off, rolling her eyes. 

 

She looks good, all things considered, glowing just a little, swinging her icepicks around like she’s daring the world to send her something she can’t handle.

 

It’s their turn to recap and he doesn’t know where to start. His head is still pounding with the remnants of a hangover. He has a list of every single terrible thing that has happened, that he has done, and a list of all the ways he’s hurt Eliot as well as everyone else in his life, but he hasn’t had the time to organize them into a comprehensive thing he can communicate. 

 

Julia manages to summarize everything in about thirty seconds. Kady throws in something about her revolution. 

 

And they’re off again, making batshit plans with unlikely success rates and even dicier logistics.

 

His brain grasps at the new direction anyway, stops spinning out into a freefall and starts stabilizing, creating another facsimile of solid ground. A new plan is something he can throw himself at and into whether or not it makes any sense.

 

For a moment it feels like he’s in the clear. Then Margo pulls him aside, eyebrows raised and arms crossed.

 

“Yes?” he asks, glancing back at the group in the kitchen for a second.

 

“What’s going on?” she says. 

 

“Um… a lot,” he offers. “I don’t… what?”

 

“What’s with the look?” she asks. “The mopey kicked puppy look? Because if you're pissy that I stepped in on your little quest-”

 

“No,” he says. “No, of course not. This isn’t just some quest, it’s Eliot, there’s nothing more important… I’m not-”

 

“Good,” she says, nodding. “Then what the fuck’s up? Cuz we need you at a hundred, Coldwater, all of us.”

 

“I know,” he says. “I will be.” He can feel himself recharging, reinvigorated by Margo, the ice picks and the determination in her eyes that he hasn’t seen since staring in the mirror two night ago before the ground fell open beneath his feet. 

 

Julia was right. It’s not over and he can dedicate himself to a plan, life and limb.

 

“Spill,” Margo says, frowning angrily. 

 

“It’s my fault,” he says. Because Margo just has power like that to drag stuff out of the core of you. 

 

“Q,” she says with a sigh. “The past few years have been such a shitstorm it’s gonna take some ultra-powered bleach and a miracle to unravel what exact action led to any of this.”

 

Her eyes are gleaming and wide, brimming over with so many emotions he can’t even begin to name them.

 

“It’s been months,” he says. “And all I’ve actually managed to do is make it that much more unlikely that we’ll get him back. I’ve made the thing that’s possessing him that much stronger. And you… you were actually on the right fucking track and because of me, we don’t even know where he is anymore. I feel like… Margo, I’m failing him and I don’t-”

 

Her hands land on his shoulders and she’s looking up at him but she still feels taller.

 

“Hey,” she says, squeezing hard, comfort with a twinge of pain, real. “There’s no failing him, okay? We’re getting him back, Quentin, and it doesn’t matter how long it took or how we got there, we’re saving him and that’s all that matters.”

 

She shakes him once. He missed her a lot.

 

“Okay?” she says, steel and strength and she’s lending some of it to him.

 

“Okay,” he says.

  
.  
  


By the time it’s over (even though probably it’s not actually over, it’s never over, there’s probably another problem and there will be another problem after that because they haven’t had a moment to breathe since stepping foot in Fillory), his brain is buzzing, a low humming that keeps going and going like a little bug in between his ears. His hands are trembly, his stomach is empty and cold, his shoulders sag. 

 

None of this is new. 

 

What’s new is the sting in his eyes that doesn’t mean tragedy, that this time means wonder because in front of him Eliot staggers like he did back in that park and his eyes blink hard and he’s looking around bewildered, his expression holding multitudes beyond boredom and blank childlike anger, his poster stiffer, holding himself up with more dignity than before because he’s Eliot Waugh, a king long before he ever touched a crown. 

 

And Quentin is bowled over. Amazement and relief and joy just sweeping up inside of him. 

 

And grief and guilt and bone-deep exhaustion crash into him from every side as he realizes he never planned for this. He worked for this. He bled, sweat, and cried for this. Eliot’s body and Eliot’s eyes and Eliot’s smile as Margo throws her arms around him like she’s never going to let go again. Eliot wrapping his arms around her, muttering something to the top of her head and then looking up and meeting his eyes and…

 

He hasn’t prepared for anything after this one moment. It was the one thing that kept him going, the one thing he had to cling to for direction and it’s here and it’s gone, ripped from under him. 

 

He feels empty, vacuous, like he’s been scooped out. 

 

He feels more tired than he’s ever felt in his life and he suddenly and painfully understands every look Julia has shot his way over the past few months, every concerned thing people have said behind his back. 

 

He’s exhausted. He’s spent. He feels like he should be dying, maybe crying, maybe turning and running because this moment was it he doesn’t have a next step anymore, he doesn’t have anything guiding him anymore, no fuel, no fire. 

 

His knees stop. Just sort of slip out from under him and he’s on the floor but it didn’t hurt. He’s just kneeling there and that feels like something. He presses his hands to his face to block out everything that’s suddenly too much. He doubles over so he can press his forehead to the cold, cold floor. 

 

“Q!” 

 

His chest is heaving. He can breathe but he feels like he’s not getting nearly enough air.

 

There are hands on his back, brushing over the back of his head, hesitant and careful and gentle and painfully, painfully familiar.

 

“Q.” Also soft, also familiar, right there above him. “Are you okay? Is he okay?” Just this side of panicked.

 

“I’m fine,” he manages to gasp out. He sticks his hand out, reaching, grasping until he brushes against something solid. Eliot’s hand wraps around his. He presses his other fist to the floor beneath him, digs his fingers into the ground. “I’m okay, I’m okay, I just-”

 

There’s another hand on his back, cool and small.

 

“It’s been a lot,” Julia explains quietly, fingers brushing the collar of his shirt. 

 

He turns his hand in Eliot’s and squeezes.

 

“It’s okay, Q,” Eliot says. “We’re okay. Just breathe, honey, breathe.”

 

And that’s something to do now. That’s something he can do now.

 

Eliot’s other hand moves up and down with his back. He pushes off the ground, sits back on his feet and looks up. 

 

“Hey,” Eliot says.

 

“Hey,” he replies and is tugged forward into a hug that feels like sliding home. He clings to Eliot’s back, turns his head into his neck and breathes and breathes and breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Magicians work and also my first non-superhero related thing ever so let me know what you think. These past few episodes killed me and I have a whole thing I want to write about Margo so feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!!


End file.
